The Life and Times of Tom, AKA Mr Friendly
by KhamanV
Summary: Every man or woman on the Island has a story; something they're running from or something they're running to. Even the Others. Ben, Richard, and Sawyer cameo.


_**The Life and Times of Tom, **_

_**AKA Mr. Friendly**_

_"He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man." _

_~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry_

~*~

_Philosophers like to talk a lot. Kinda how you spot 'em in the wild. Look for the fella running his mouth about not much in particular, but sometimes they say something smarter than you expect. Sometimes they'll bust something out about truth being beauty and beauty being truth and you know they're onto something right and pure there. Sometimes not._

_Could swear I read something once by one of these, something like it don't matter too much where you been or where you came from, so much as where it is you're heading to. Where's _home. _And I'll lay here, the sun shining down in my eyes as the sand creeps in, and I'll tell you. Home's more'n what you make it. It's where you're _right_, where you lay down everything you were running from and forget about what it is you think you regret, and you can just find peace. Took me a long time, and I no longer regret any of it. I'm at one with what I am, where I've been, what I've seen._

_Life I chose, the place I made home? Yeah, I know what it is. Some people might think it a kind of death. You pay up your innocence. You put your very soul at hazard. And I was okay with it. Am okay with it now, ol' blondie up there still staring at me and the corners are getting dark. Things getting fuzzy around the edges. There's a buzzing in my mind and I know moments are short, but that's okay. Home remembers you here. I made a place for myself._

_I don't have to run anymore, not from Daddy, not from myself, I don't ever again have to_

_~*~_

run from the house where Daddy was shouting –_ still_ shouting, and the voice carries on down the road. Calling him names. Calling him _that _word. The red handprint is still bright on Tom's cheek and he's crying, crying big fat 'girly' tears. His brothers are left behind, and Tom's got nothing but the checkered shirt on his back and a couple dollars he had to get himself a lunch, but food's the last thing on his mind.

Tom's running fast, so fast, and he's beanpole thin and damn near pretty as a girl, all of fourteen years old and running, running. Part of him knows already that this'll be the last time in his life he looks like this, all red and wild and scared and looking for freedom, part of him knows he's got a body whose metabolism is going to slow down before its time and he's going to get bigger. Bigger to hide himself from himself, he figures. He knows all about hiding. About disguising.

The fight that set it all off? Tom had gone for football, like he told his Daddy he would. And he ran, not as fast as he is now, but he ran, and for being a beanpole, he was strong. Coach would liked to have had him, but Tom wasn't happy about the fact. Wasn't proud of being wanted like that. He didn't much like football – sure, tossing the ball was fun, but he was uncomfortable. Something about the other boys made him feel funny, and his Daddy knew it. But when he told Daddy that he _had _found something he liked, something that made him happy, well, that didn't go over so well. No future in theatre for Tom, if Daddy had his way.

And the fight got bigger, and Tom got called a sissy, and then _that_ word. Tom knew all about that word. "Them fags getting all prissy down Diego way!" Daddy'd snarl, reading the paper. And now it was out, Daddy thought much the same of Tom.

_Well, fuckya! _Tom thought. _He's got other sons. I'm checkin' out_ – only none of his thoughts are quite so clear as that, because now he's huffing. Two miles away and huffing. There's an aunt up a couple counties over, on his mom's side where they don't like Daddy too much, and if he's clever, he might be able to come up with something to get a place to hunker for a bit. First, though, he's got to hitchhike. Maybe he can get himself into a nice truck

~*~

a nice truck with a bunk in the back," Tom finishes. He's got a beer in his hand, and the rest of the crew's got drinks of their own. They're in the back of a small-town theatre, wrapping up the pre-show prep for a production of _Our Town._ The little podunk he's in makes the play out to be more of a documentary than any sort of real commentary on family life, but that's all right with Tom. It's a fun job, and in a week, he'll have another set of freight runs lined up and he'll be crisscrossing the country again.

Long haul trucker by day, prop and makeup guy by night, that's our Tom. He tells himself he's happy. Sometimes it works.

"Why don't you just settle up in New York?" asks one of the little actresses. Only she says it like _yaaawk_. The crew in this case is mostly also the cast, though there's a couple prima donna sorts that seem like to faint if they had to handle a hammer. "You're good enough to get yourself on with dang near any theatre you'd like! Don't have to carry on in that stinky thing of yours with no real home."

"It's a Peterbilt," Tom says with some wounded pride. After all, he bought it himself, turned up his nose at the little bit his Daddy left when he died. Old son of a bitch on his dying bed screaming at his last bent kid – but Tom turns his thoughts elsewhere. Hell, he does all his own repairs. Think on that personal achievement, Tom. Don't look inward. "And I keep it clean. It _is_ my home," he finishes, feeling a little lame about it. Because it's what he tells himself, tells others with enough conviction that they generally buy it, but sure enough, nothing's felt like home since he was fourteen. He's damn near thirty now, and the beanpole long since gone to fat, and a little bit of puff around his nipples means he ain't ever gonna be more than a behind the scenes wizard, less he wants to be in a John Waters adaptation. But he's okay with that. Isn't he?

The little actress gives him a doubtful smile. She likes him, and he likes her, but that's about all it's going to be. He gives her a wry grin back and she salutes him with her beer bottle and the conversation carries on. And on, into the evening, and later on, one of the older prop guys and he wander off, talking about the pretty black night and Tom's not thinking about the next

~*~

-job."

"I'm sorry, I spaced out. Recollecting some things there," Tom goes red. He didn't mean to drift away right then. He needs the job the company's offering. It's a bit outside what he's done before, but he needs the money. Needs it bad. Peterbilt's got an inspection coming up, and Tom doesn't think it can make it. It's been five years, and a lot of hard road. For the both of them, truth be told. The distance is starting to show on his face, too.

Tom's not sure why a nice big science lab's checked out his varied resume and picked _him_ for mechanical support operations, but the job's contract and at a nice pay, and the truck can rest a bit. All expenses included, a place to stay somewhere out by Portland, and a little extra if the job goes well and he can stay on. Though he's never heard of a support job with the kind of NDA these guys are requiring.

He can't take his eyes off the scientist, either. Doctor Alpert's re-listing some of the job requirements, and Tom catches it all this time. He'd be working to keep some old wiring up and running, working with the big bosses to keep things in line. How everyone does a bit of everything, and there might be some security work. Hell, might even be a place for Tom's talent with spirit gum. Says a man named Jacob's looked over the applications, and Tom's struck him the most. That it was high praise, and Tom's got high hopes on hearing it.

Alpert doesn't look like any sort of doc Tom's ever seen, with eyes that look like they've seen everything. He's striking, and pretty in the sort of way most men can't pull off and not look fey, but nothing about him tells Tom anything but that this is a very reserved, very private man. The more he listens, the more he's growing unsure.

"We're a pretty tight-knit community, Tom," says Richard Alpert with a warm smile. "Might even be you'll choose to join it permanently. We get a lot of people that just decide to call it home."

_Home,_ and that's a loaded word for Tom. He's doubtful about that sort of outcome, because 'home' means daddy figures that tell you what to be, but he could give it a

~*~

try to swivel the camera over there if you can." The little bit, a skinny little nerd with the improbably big name of George Sandersalk jerked and fiddled with a knob on the Pearl's console. "God damn it, we lost it."

_It's_ a polar bear, and Tom is leaned back in the observer's chair, admiring the bear's will to survive on its own. It's been loose in the jungle since before he got off the submarine in a place that was decidedly not in Portland, and one of the weirder aspects to this kind of catchall life-work he's got now is to keep an eye out for its predations.

Ben – the intense, bug-eyed boss of the place – keeps a watch up for it. Tom's noticed a sweet spot for the island's few kids and any sort of animal, and that's about it from that guy. Enough for him to respect, though Tom hasn't met him much to make any other sort of opinion. He's just a boss, distant and not in his hair.

If the bear comes towards the barracks, the first act is to try and lead it away, get it to go back into the jungle. Tom's pulled it off twice now, led it away with a nice hunk of local island boar, but sooner or later... Ben knows that if it looks even vaguely like it's going to go for someone, someone's home, they're gonna have to put it down.

George swears and sags against the console. He's been kind of a prick to Tom since they both arrived on the island together, nothing personal, just that generalized 'we don't get along' vibe, but not even Tom expects the reaction he's about to explode into when George says, "Kinda apt, isn't it? A bear for a bear!"

It's Isabel that

~*~

"She had to damn near tear him off me!" George is howling to Ben, who is staring (always staring) at them both with a kind of aggravated disbelief. His glasses are off and on the table in front of him, and he looks like nothing more than the general manager of a midwestern bank who's being kept from his nice lunch.

Tom's bleeding from the lip and he's got the start of a solid shiner coming up his left eye, but he sneaks a glance at George and part of him (that fourteen year old part that's still running up the road and thinking _well, FUCKYA, daddy!) _can proudly think to himself that, yeah, you should see the other guy.

Isabel's standing behind the two of them with her arms crossed and a cutting look. Tom doesn't look back to see her, but all he can think is something George said once they both got off the dock and began to examine their new neighbors.

"Check out that lady," he says. "Looks like she's got a pussy lined with razor blades!" and Tom suddenly feels like hammering on the skinny little bastard again at the memory. Isabel's a harsh woman, maybe even sometimes deserving those sexist, cutting names for strong women in power, but she was also fair and hadn't done anyone anything they didn't have coming. He can respect that. His lips purse instead, and the act hurts like hell.

"What exactly happened, Tom? Why did you attack him?" Ben fixes Tom with an inscrutable look.

He shrugs in response. It's stupid now, he knows it, and he's inclined to just take what's coming and move on. Ben watches him a long while, then turns his gaze over to George and asks similar. George lists the whole event like a screenplay; to his credit, he doesn't lie, doesn't omit the words that set Tom off so.

"Why did you say something like that?" Ben asks George. He sounds honestly puzzled.

George looks back at him with total disbelief. "Well... because he's gay!"

Ben tilts his head. His tone comes out curiously prissy and pissy to Tom's ears, but he says a thing that Tom's never heard before, a thing that makes Tom love the cold man a little bit. Enough to buy his loyalty for years to follow, even when events give him more than a moment's doubt about what's coming next.

"So?" Ben says, and two days later, George is gone. Tom's just told 'off island,' but he doesn't think much to care.

When he thinks back, in his last moments later on, it occurs to Tom that that was the second where he began to realize he really was at home, when he was, at last

~*~

at peace with myself," Tom says. There's a wound in his chest, and one way or another, he's only got seconds left.

"What?" drawls the blond man with the gun.

"I said, son. I'm at peace with myself. Don't much care if you buy my surrender or not. I'm where I need to be," says Tom, and those are his last words in service to a place that was a complete mystery to him, and that's the way he liked it.

The sound of the gun echoes through the jungle, and for Tom, his long journey is over.

~*~

_Doesn't do to go on with a lonely life. I didn't die lonely. I had the island. I had its people. I died doing things I believed in, for people I called friends. People I loved in my way, whether they ever knew it or not. I had a lot of sympathy for folks. Even feel bad for the kids that got dropped on us. They didn't ask for their plane to crash here._

_But things get to be more important than any one of us, and you can't squat back and deny what you're supposed to do and say whoa, there. This ain't on me. Because that's a kind of vanity – the things we do, we gotta do for all. They know that up at the Temple, these are the words we got taught when I decided to take the promise. Decided to stay, of my own free will, and serve. And when I'm buried, I'll be part of it all again. Part of the island. Bent, broken, not a one of us an innocent soul, but here we are and I was happy, god damn it. Happy._

_I'll be around again. Always comes back around, you see. Everything changes, the poets reckon. And nothing's ever lost. My name was Tom, and I loved my life. Even the harsh bits. They made me what I am, and what I needed to be._

_Well, fuckya, Daddy. I did it all on my own._

~_Fin_

(ABC's LOST and its characters are not my creation, nor do I claim any ownership or rights to the above content beyond that of the average godforsaken fanfiction writer. All errors are my own.)

7/4/09 MDS


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